A Study in Floriography
by Emelia'sSecretTwin
Summary: Sherlock may claim he's a sociopath unfettered by human relationships – but that's an awful lot of flowers he's got lining his hospital room. Where do they come from? And what do they say about the people who gifted them? A series of introspective vignettes in which flowers reveal what Sherlock means to his friends – and perhaps what Sherlock's friends mean to him.
1. Introduction

_A/N: This story is canon-compliant and set during HLV_

* * *

 _Mechanical exhalation. Mechanical inhalation. Mechanical exhalation: intubation._

* * *

 _Slack jaw; lackadaisical feeling about the arms, and legs, and eyelids. Suspended, only just above the twisting pull of vertigo. Thin wires holding him up, there: methadone, or something similarly potent._

* * *

 _Smell of flowers – a background tingling, sequestering his peripheral senses. Far from the salted tang of a nurse's deodorant, or the powdery sting of boiled linen. No; fresh and honest, multifoliate notes. Hm. One of the few_ pleasant _constancies about this place._

* * *

"…-lock…"

"Sh...lock."

" _Sherlock_."

Pause; filled by a muted sigh. Feet shuffling. A glass object clinks on wood-top. Then the door tuts a consonant click and is shut.

 _John?_

Or was it just his drugged imagination?

The quiet takes its night-time sentry duty now, and stands there wringing its hands for a bit before settling like an old friend. _A little… lonely here, isn't it?,_ it remarks.

Bemused, Sherlock clambers to wakefulness. Everything is slightly hazy around the edges. Moving his eyes, the changing patterns of glare on enamelled surfaces twitch like dying beetles. He takes a moment to deconstruct his surroundings. Out the window, the building's shadow makes the encroaching evening look much darker, and an easterly breeze is evidently kicking its paws amongst the red leaves. Unbidden, an autumnal dog barks from its corner in Sherlock's memory. _Redbeard?_

But Sherlock knows how the opioid sweeps its skirts through his mind palace like Queen Mab: things that were once comforting start toying with his perception. Grimacing, he turns his eyes back towards his room. Inside, the multitude of flower arrangements around him - brought in by visitors, apparently - at least stay still within his blurred vision. The air around them, though, seems pearlescent as oil and water, thanks to the haze of their perfume.

 _Now_ he can put a face to a scent. Go figure. Templed fingers of heather; the wide embrace of daisies. Interwoven wildflowers and some rather sturdy hydrangeas. A facetious black wreath. A rose, with no name. Reaching, claw-like crocuses.

And, new amongst them all, judging by the smell, are starbursts of white gladiolus, standing in a glass vase on the wooden cabinet.

Together, the flowers seem to gaze warmly back at him. Sherlock smiles to himself: he's not so alone as one might think, then.


	2. Hydrangeas

_Hydrangea (Hydrangea Macrophylla) - perseverance_

* * *

The last time Gregory Lestrade bought flowers had been in a floundering attempt to reconcile with his wife. It hadn't really worked; maybe flowers just weren't his division. Yet they still came in handy, Greg thought as he took a bouquet of them through the Royal London's ICU; something a little more meaningful than a cheerily vacuous "Hope you're feeling better, mate!". He only hoped his tasteful, if somewhat frivolous, offering of blue hydrangeas wouldn't mark a pattern in losing loved ones.

Because Sherlock Holmes, recipient of said flowers, was very much a loved one. Even though he conspired at the best of times to be the most annoying berk this side of the universe.

It had only taken two weeks for London's criminal classes to put on their best sound-and-light, come-one-come-all, it's-even-got-bells-on crimes since the man was hospitalised. Scotland Yard needed Sherlock; failing that, they needed Greg - on hand to wipe the shit from the fan, more often than not. Yet here he was, giving get-well flowers to a man probably too off-his-face on painkillers to notice them.

Sherlock's almost phobic derision of love had never precluded himself from demonstrating it. And only in this one case for Sherlock, had actions spoken louder than words. Last time they had talked, Sherlock "couldn't recall" his shooter. And yet, only some godforsaken heroic duty could have compelled him to persevere through a Parkour stunt, a fourteen-hour stint as a missing person, and all the internal damage exacerbated alongside his physical weakness. Sherlock Holmes, the man who could barely bother to lift a cup of tea when in one of his dark moods, was running around London with an internal haemorrhage just to reveal a lie, for God's sake. And, perhaps, to solve a life.

This, as it turned out, made it incredibly easy for Lestrade to solve the mystery of the shooter for himself.

The night Sherlock went missing, Mycroft Holmes had alerted Greg to the Baker Street ambulance call. He had arrived to find Sherlock being loaded into the back of an ambulance. John was focused on pressing an oxygen mask to his friend's face. Mary, a little way apart from the group, stood stoically grim; yet her eyes, darting intermittently between her husband and their friend, were as wincingly harrowed as Sherlock's own hitching breaths. Lestrade made to join her. At his motion, she glanced up and shook her head imperceptibly. Something about the hardy glint in her eyes made Greg stop in his tracks. When the ambulance took off from the curb, sirens howling, her whole body jolted – perhaps suppressing an urge to follow it.

It was at this point that Lestrade had ceased pursuit of his hurtling train of thoughts. Who was he to pass judgement on events within a marriage? When it came to pressing charges, the ball was firmly in Sherlock's court.

By God, Lestrade could wade knee-deep through a stinking mire, following a lagging sniffer dog and a lost cause. He could forgo days of sleep in lieu of coffee and a lead in a serial homicide case. But to persevere in protecting your very own shooter – someone who had split the very atoms of you as she had evidently split the nucleus of John Watson's heart-…

That could only be the choice of a man whose sole reason to live was to prove his worth to the love which supported him.

And a choice made by such a man was a choice made to be respected. Sherlock had paid dearly for this, in mind and body. But Greg knew – from personal experience – that when Sherlock sacrificed himself, it was never in vain.

Greg moved to Sherlock's bedside cabinet, where he put his bouquet. He gazed at his friend's sleeping form. Sherlock was certainly out for the count, this visit. For outsiders, only familiar with the consulting detective's whirlwind public behaviour, it was a disconcerting silence. But Greg knew the man for all his pensive silences and his black moods… not forgetting those of a chemical nature. By contrast to them now, Sherlock looked almost peaceful.

As if curled in the eye of a storm.

So now, two weeks after the initial incident, Sherlock's battle was still focused on the physical. Sherlock was the very word perseverance. Lestrade begged in every thought that the man's mettle would be proven again. Him and John Watson. John, with his own heart on the scales, at home, alone. Sherlock, here, with no eyes to watch him save for the ocular buds of flowers.

Sometimes, plain-old earthy mettle didn't get a part. Sometimes, life was as binary as the blips on an ECG monitor. Mostly, death was unaware of the virtuous.

Though Greg had to remind himself this was Sherlock bloody Holmes he was thinking about. And if ever there were a person on such a literary ascent to goodness, it was he.


	3. Heather

_Purple and white heather (Calluna Vulgaris) - solitude and protection, respectively_

* * *

Sherlock was just tucking into a steak-and-mash pie for lunch when his brother arrived. Laying down his ceremonial offerings (a handsome tub of flowers and a greeting-card), Mycroft took his seat by the bed. Sherlock ignored him for as long as possible.

"Afternoon, Sherlock," Mycroft called.

His brother nodded a greeting. "Mycroft. You've brought me flowers. How very antiquated of you." He tipped his head towards the two-tone heather arrangement just placed on the bedside cabinet.

"I agree it's a waste of time. Yet tradition – and Anthea – demanded it. I thought the purple and white would offset the baby blue everyone else seems to have thought you'd appreciate."

Sherlock sniffed. "I'd have preferred my laptop."

"Ah," said Mycroft. Reaching into his inside coat pocket, he pulled out a brand-new black iPod. "You'll be more grateful I'm sure if I tell you I've loaded this with all your favourites. Wagner, Bach, and -" he sniffed contemptuously – " _Stravinsky_. I also have noise-cancelling headphones for you in case Mrs Hudson or, God forbid, our parents drop by in the near future."

Sherlock glowered. He couldn't fault his brother for that.

Taking Sherlock's silence as a show of gratitude, Mycroft put the objects in the chest of drawers. "Well, now-"

"-How's John going?"

Mycroft raised his eyebrows at the interruption. Chewing his words as if they were medium rare, he embarked, "John is as well as can be expected. He's currently at Baker Street. If the splodges of gravy on his pyjamas when I last saw him are anything to go by, he's being admirably cared for by Mrs Hudson."

"I asked how he was, not for an account of your food envy."

Mycroft sighed. "Sherlock, what does it matter?"

"Come on. If he was wearing his pyjamas in front of _you_ ," his brother snapped, "he wasn't feeling so fine and dandy, was he?"

"Even so, I'm not going to go prying. The solitude will do him good."

Sherlock snorted. The forkful of pie at that moment en route to his mouth was jolted onto his lap. Wordlessly, Mycroft handed him his handkerchief.

Wiping himself down, Sherlock continued, "Last time he was left like this... things weren't looking so good."

"Then I'll send a car around to keep an eye out-"

"Of course you would, Mycroft. Doesn't the company of a bunch of goons make everything feel like a bed of roses?" Sherlock replaced the cover of his dinner plate and set down his cutlery. Reaching over, he tapped at a button on his morphine unit. "Now-" he indicated a plastic tub on his tray- "have the cake. Wouldn't want you going home on an empty stomach."

Mycroft scoffed. "I'd rather go home on an empty stomach than eat some freezer-kept, mass-produced vanilla sponge that's clearly been made with powdered milk and store-bought fondant."

"Oh, that's right. You must have something from _Maison Bertraux_ stashed away at home. Let me guess… the almond and apricot cake? Or the mille-feuille?"

"Neither. And nothing else, for that matter."

"Good to hear you're keeping off the sweeties." Sherlock said with a wry smile.

Mycroft pursed his lips. "What, unlike you? Sherlock, let's be frank. Since all this started, you've been off your game. It's causing disastrous collateral damage."

"That's because I've been on morphine, can't you see-"

"I'm not talking about the _shooting_ , Sherlock. Cast your mind way back."

His brother frowned. "Oh," he said finally. Rather than abating, the crease worked further down his face.

Mycroft did not hold back. "I've tried telling you nicely. You have been under the delusion that caring is an advantage for long enough. Kid yourself no longer. Look at John. Look at _you_ , for God's sake. Look at anyone who has died in the course of any of your cases. Caring helps no one. It only creates more targets for disaster to strike. As emotions heighten, so too do obsessions, consequences, stakes. It's what stops the world running like clockwork."

"Clockwork is boring," Sherlock muttered mutinously.

"Clockwork is safe. Fewer people suffer."

Sherlock, opening his mouth to reply, stopped himself and raised his teacup to his lips instead. He sat there, swilling the tea around his mouth before gulping it down. Mycroft did not have to wait too long before an answer came, cryptically: "Daleks."

Mycroft found himself taken aback. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's the benefit of being in a hospital when bored nurses turn on the television during orderlies when they think you're unconscious."

"I don't follow."

"You get to see the world from the perspective of a thirty-seven-year-old father with a childhood obsession with sci-fi that he feels impatient to pass on to future generations. He's a fan of BBC 2. I've learnt a lot about time and relative dimensions in space."

"Get to the point."

"Keep your hair on." Sherlock paused to savour his time at the helm, before beating ahead. "The Daleks are a race of emotionless automatons bred by a central omnipotent being for the purposes of consuming the universe. They do their duty… like clockwork."

"Except there is no central omnipotent being in this world."

"True. But in the show, there is another central omnipotent being with two hearts – ham-fisted imagery, I grant you - who defeats the Daleks each and every time, with a kettle and a piece of string. All that happens is that these apparently 'emotionless' machines don't need food. They run on vengeance, and bitter twistedness."

"I'm not that anxious about my next sugar hit. And though I presume you think you've made your point, I do ask you to get on with it and make it again, because sound and fury signify nothing."

"Stop deflecting."

"What's got into you?"

Sherlock smirked. "Oh, just playing Devil's advocate."

"Is the Devil's drug of choice morphine?"

"'Dunno. It does provide an easy conduit, though."

Mycroft shifted in his seat. "Are you saying the Devil is a middle-aged father with a jurisprudential moral code and a predilection for mid-budget BBC exports?

"Don't be dramatic. Let's put it another way; the point is, if you can't kill hate, why, then, should you kill love?"

"Alright," Mycroft conceded, "you have me there. The truth is, one can't stop caring. Why else would I be here of all-" he sighed– "Godforsaken places?" He sighed heavily. "But solitude is protection. For those one... cares for. Especially for us in our line of life."

Sherlock looked troubled. "I tried that once before. Look what it did to John Watson."

Mycroft hesitated. "Yes. He got on with his life."

Sherlock's expression did not change, but Mycroft fancied the ambient temperature had dropped several tenths of a degree. Taking his cue, he made to leave. "Sherlock: I fear that if not for me, the East Wind would've taken you long ago. If you go on like this, however, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop the storm. Has remembering Redbeard _ever_ been of any help to you?"

As he got to the door, a clear voice reached him. "Thank you for the flowers. I appreciate the sentiment. But I have to say, I've always had a soft spot for baby blue."


End file.
